Vintage Vinyl – Galaxie 500/Luna [1989-2006]

Vintage Vinyl – Galaxie 500/Luna [1989-2006]




Artist: Galaxie 500 & Luna

Genre: Indie Dream Pop / Space Pop

A Head Full of Wishes

Galaxie 500 / Luna… Best of

http://rapidshare.com/files/329285063/On_Fire.zip

This being my 100 post I wanted to offer up a sweet treat to all you indie lovers out there. Galaxie 500 and Luna were two amazing bands that had a huge influence on indie music in the 80’s and 90’s. When I think of these two great bands, both of which were fronted by legendary indie pop icon Dean Wareham, purity, slow build, sonic depth, and simplicity come to mind….Capturing Galaxie 500’s tender, swirling psychedelia at its best, On Fire echoes with a quiet, humble, wholly-imperfect kind of perfection. Recorded, like everything they ever did, by producer/svengali/bong-enthusiast Kramer, it finds a blossoming band given the full benefit of the studio. Here, Kramer takes a nervous, tentative outfit blessed with but rudimentary punk-rock chops, and presents them in a light so flattering they sound epic, grandiose, and powerful. Galaxie 500 were, essentially, a melancholy pop-band lost in a daydreamy sound steeped in the Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, Television, and The Feelies. But, when dowsed in Kramer’s judicious use of reverb and echo, their sweet, swirling, psychedelic haze grew in size. And, with that, emotion. ~ Anthony Carew

Following in the wake of Wareham’s previous band, Galaxie 500, Luna became the early 1990s archetype for spacey indie pop. Their music was full of cosmic guitar interplay between Wareham and Sean Eden, but the rhythm section– at first ex-Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski and bassist Justin Harwood, later Lee Wall and Britta Phillips– was always solid and down-to-earth. Wareham remained the deadpan, lovesick guy at the heart of it all, and his liners for this compilation offer de facto justification for every track, regardless of which deserved ones may have been left out. Best of opens with “Moon Palace”, the first of five tracks from Penthouse and Wareham’s personal favorite Luna song. “You were stuck in a dream/ And you wanted to scream/ But it’s nothing at all/ No, it’s nothing at all,” he sings as guitars move between stoned country and a 14-hour Technicolor dream. Penthouse’s top billing in the tracklist is fortuitous– it’s their best album, and anyone who likes this comp should seek it out– but what’s remarkable is how well the rest of Luna’s material stands up to it. Solid to their final days, “Astronaut”– from the band’s 2004 swan song Rendezvous– is one of Luna’s best songs, with a drumbeat about four times brisker than anything else here and one of Wareham’s strongest vocal performances. ~ Pitchfork


bolachas*